Twitter is adding stickers to its ephemeral, Snapchat Stories-like Fleets, the social media company announced on Wednesday. Stickers are available for users on both Android and iOS.
When you’re making a Fleet, you’ll be able to add stickers by tapping the smiley face icon on the bottom row of your screen. When you do, you’ll see a collection of Twitter-made animated stickers and emoji (the latter of which Twitter calls “Twemoji”). And if you search for something in the search bar at the top of the screen, Twitter will pull up GIFs sourced from Tenor and Facebook-owned Giphy.
Your Fleets just got an upgrade.
Now you can express yourself in the conversation with stickers. Add GIFs and Twemojis to a Fleet by tapping the icon, on Android and iOS. pic.twitter.com/Ihh9ZZh70a
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) March 31, 2021
If you’ve ever used stickers on Snapchat or Instagram, this new feature should feel quite familiar to you. That said, the feature might feel so familiar because both Snapchat and Instagram have offered it for years. But Twitter is still in early days with Fleets, which only became available to everyone back in November, so perhaps stickers are just a first sign of more additions to come.
Snap, the company behind Snapchat, is planning to continue its push into hardware devices with a new pair of augmented-reality glasses and a drone, according to a report by The Information. The Spectacles will reportedly include displays so the wearer can see the AR effects without having to use their phone — a feature that was notably missing from the all the Spectacles that came before.
One of The Information’s sources says that the new Spectacles will be meant for developers and creators, rather than consumers — though you could probably argue that, at $380, the Spectacles 3 are already mostly limited to that market as well. As the article points out, though, the intention is likely to have the developers make lenses and experiences that consumers will use at some point in the future.
If the new Spectacles act as an AR headset, it could be the culmination of what the company has been working towards with the first three versions of the product. Currently, the Spectacles are mainly capture devices, acting as head-mounted cameras with the bulk of the processing being done on the user’s phone. This hasn’t necessarily been a recipe for success: the company lost $40 million when it was stuck with unsold inventory of the original pair, and the company’s hardware head left shortly after the second-generation glasses came out.
If the reports about the new Spectacles are true, it could indicate that Snap isn’t backing down from its hardware dreams — the company’s CEO has said that AR hardware will be part of what defines Snap by the end of this decade. If it wants to continue pushing its AR glasses, it seems like it will have to contend with competition from the likes of Apple and Facebook— both companies seem to be developing their own face-mounted wearables.
As for the drone, there’s precious little information about it. There have been rumors about Snap working on a drone for years, and back in 2017 it acquired a drone company. The Information also reports that Snap invested $20 million into a Chinese drone company as well. There’s no information on when the drone will ship, but the report’s sources say that it’s recently been made the priority of Snap Lab, a hardware group at Snap.
In other AR headset news, The Information also reported today that the headset teased by Pokémon Go creator Niantic is actually a reference design made by Qualcomm — the two companies announced that they were partnering back in 2019. Niantic is also reportedly looking to go the developer-first route as well.
YouTube Shorts, the company’s short-form answer to TikTok, is launching in beta in the United States starting today. The short video format has already been available for several months in India, but today marks its debut stateside (along with the addition of several new features).
For the beta launch, YouTube Shorts will feature all the basics of any TikTok clone: a multi-segment camera that makes it easy for creators to quickly string together clips, a wide selection of music tracks (with catalogs from “over 250 labels and publishers”), and a robust-looking captioning tool, the last of which is debuting alongside the US launch. “We really want to create a playground of creativity here where we give creators the raw materials to produce great videos,” says Todd Sherman, YouTube’s product lead for Shorts.
Like TikTok, users will be able to swipe through an endless, algorithmically generated feed of short videos, subscribe to their favorite creators, explore specific hashtags or sounds, and remix other videos’ audio tracks. Even the interface looks similar to TikTok’s player.
But instead of getting its own app, Shorts will live on a new carousel on the home tab of the mobile YouTube app. (The company is also experimenting with a dedicated Shorts tab.)
And while Shorts checks off a lot of the basics, it’s missing plenty of features that make TikTok such a unique viral hit. There’s virtually no collaborative features available in Shorts at launch — so users won’t be able to reply to other videos or join together in a version of TikTok’s popular duet or stitch features. Also missing is a way to view a more curated feed. For now, Shorts only offers its main, algorithmic feed (similar to TikTok’s “For You” page), with no option to only view videos from accounts to which you’ve subscribed.
Sherman says that the company views Shorts as a new avenue for the next generation of content creators to emerge. YouTube itself is filled with a hyper-competitive landscape of established creators who specialize in making videos that typically run 10 minutes or longer. Shorts offers creators a chance to break that mold, much like what YouTube originally offered to internet creators when it first launched in 2005.
“I think the real core of what Shorts is about is enabling that next generation of creators that maybe even found it too difficult, previously, to even consider creating on YouTube,” Sherman explains. “And if we can help fulfill our mission of giving them a voice, then I think that would make us feel like we’re continuing to grow a YouTube in a way that keeps it relevant for this next generation of creators to find a voice on this platform.”
That’s not to say that Shorts won’t offer anything to existing creators. For starters, YouTube will share subscriptions across traditional channels and Shorts. So any users that find your content in Shorts and subscribe to get more of it will also be signing up for any long-form videos, and creators with tons of subscribers already will have a built-in audience to whom they can deliver Shorts. In at least one implementation of Shorts that the company is trying, Shorts videos will appear directly in users’ subscription tabs.
According to Sherman, YouTube has some big plans for how it’ll tie Shorts into the broader YouTube ecosystem down the line — features that might help the fledgling service stand out in a crowded field that’s already dominated by TikTok and other (less established) competitors like Instagram’s Reels or Snapchat’s Spotlight.
And those features are going to be essential: YouTube is coming very late to a party that’s already ruled by TikTok, and as Reels and Spotlight have shown, its no small task to not only replicate but outdo TikTok’s seemingly magical blend of algorithmic alchemy, collaborative tools, and viral trends. Unfortunately, YouTube Shorts is already playing catch-up, and its uniquely YouTube features are still very half-baked.
Shorts does have a few clever ties into traditional YouTube videos: at launch, creators will be able to jump right to creating a Short from music videos for licensed songs, for instance. And in the future, the company plans to allow users to remix sound from any YouTube video for use in Shorts, a potential goldmine of content for creators to remix into new memes and videos. (YouTube users will be able to opt out, if they’d prefer to not have their audios used.)
But Shorts just still barely scratches the surface. For example, Shorts that use a song clip can link out to the music video on YouTube proper, but there’s no easy collection or link to find Shorts of a song from the regular video player, for instance.
While it’s starting from behind, YouTube is an unparalleled force for videos online, and the fact that creators can seamlessly transition between Shorts and long-form videos — while bringing their audiences with them — isn’t something to discount.
“As we grow Shorts, we can connect that ecosystem to the broader YouTube. And that means that if you are a short-form creator and you grow to be a long-form creator, that audience can grow with you,” Sherman says.
Being able to directly link to the original sources of content for audio — whether it be a song, a movie clip, or a snippet of an interview — is also a powerful advantage for YouTube, as is the sheer size of the site.
As Sherman explains, “One of the underpinnings that has helped so many people become creators is that you if give them high-quality inputs, they’re more likely to get to high-quality outputs by remixing other things.” And if you’re looking for videos to input, it’s hard to find a bigger source of them than Youtube.
But there are still big unanswered questions that YouTube has to figure out about Shorts — chief among them, how creators will make money. “I think the world has come to expect YouTube to support creators. And I think that’s going to extend to Shorts also,” says Sherman. “The way we think about it is: television has a different business model than movies, YouTube has a different business model than television, and short-form video is going to have a different business model than long-form YouTube.”
For now, though, YouTube isn’t making any announcements as to what monetization options will look like on Shorts.
Another big question is what — if anything — YouTube is planning to do to make sure that Shorts doesn’t end up as another place for clout-chasing content farmers to just repost popular TikToks and reap the rewards (something that Instagram Reels continues to struggle with.) Sherman says that it’s something that the Shorts team is looking into, but that they have a fine line to walk: YouTube doesn’t want to discourage creators from posting their content on multiple platforms, but it also doesn’t want people just reposting videos from other people that they just downloaded off TikTok either.
The company says that it’ll take a bit of time for Shorts to roll out, but that it should “be available to everybody in the US over the next several weeks.”
A potential animation for Twitter’s long-rumored “undo send” feature has been discovered by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, giving us our best look yet at how it might work.
The interface shows Twitter’s familiar “Your Tweet was sent” dialog above a new “Undo” button. The undo button doubles as a progress bar, which appears to show you how long you have to undo a tweet before it gets sent. Gmail offers a similar option for emails, where it provides a short window to stop messages from being sent after clicking the “Send” button.
“Undo send” has been a rumored part of a paid Twitter subscription tier after it was first mentioned in a user survey last year. It might not be the “edit button” that Twitter users have been requesting forever (and which will probably never happen), but it would still offer users the ability to quickly stop a tweet from posting if they spot a last second typo or Bad Take.
Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that Twitter is exploring paid subscriptions as a way to reduce its reliance on advertising revenue in response to competition from Facebook and Snapchat. The subscriptions could include access to features like “undo send” and profile customization options, it said. Bloomberg also reported that Twitter was exploring ways for users to pay one another for exclusive content, a feature the company later announced as Super Follows.
Jane Manchun Wong is an app researcher who digs through code to find unreleased and unannounced features. Last year she was among the first to spot Twitter’s Birdwatch initiative to allow users to root out misinformation on its service, and she also spotted Twitter’s overhaul of its verification system prior to its official announcement.
The AverMedia PW315 is too expensive for casual use, and while it works well in low light and too much light, it’s not that much cheaper than other, higher quality 60 fps webcams.
For
Operates well in all kinds of lighting
1080p @ 60 fps recording
Customizable through software
Against
Grainy, pixelated images
Tinny microphone
Image quality looks worse than cheaper alternatives
Webcams that can capture footage at 1080p and 60 frames per second can be expensive, like the $170 Logitech StreamCam or $200 Razer Kiyo Pro. There’s good reason for that, since 60 fps is a niche feature that’s best paired alongside video game footage. Unless you’re a game streamer, you probably won’t need it. But game streaming is also getting more accessible than ever from a technical standpoint, which is why budget 60 fps cameras like AverMedia’s new PW315 webcam are so enticing.
Coming in at $119, the AverMedia is still more expensive than 30 fps alternatives, but it does veer much closer to casual-use cameras like the Logitech C920 than other, more professional-focused 60 fps options. It also works well across lighting scenarios and comes with some cute though only somewhat useful post processing software. However, the camera’s image quality seems to have taken a hit along with its price.
Well-Lit Room
Logitech C920
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Razer Kiyo Pro
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
AverMedia PW315 Webcam
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
I tested the AverMedia PW315 in a well-lit room alongside both the $79 Logitech C920 and the $200 Razer Kiyo Pro, and it’s in this scenario where the camera disappointed me most. While its 95-degree lens captured more of my background than either competitor (and without the fish eye effect present on the Kiyo Pro’s wide angle options), the AverMedia was the only camera to show grain in my room’s standard, most optimal lighting conditions. While photos taken with it look OK shrunken down or from a distance, zooming in shows heavy pixelation, to such a degree that I’d forgive you for thinking you’re looking at a 720p picture.
That’s a shame, because the AverMedia webcam is also one of the few webcams I’ve tested to have almost perfect color accuracy out of the box. Unlike the C920, my skin doesn’t look cooler than usual, and unlike the Kiyo Pro, it doesn’t look warmer either. But then again, lower image quality tends to make everyone look better.
Low Light Room
Logitech C920
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Razer Kiyo Pro
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
AverMedia PW315 Webcam
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
I also tested the AverMedia PW315 in mid-day with my curtains drawn, my door shut and all artificial light sources turned off except for my monitor. The result? It looked better! Unlike the Logitech C920, which introduces some blur and takes a slight hit to image quality in low light, the AverMedia’s picture quality looks relatively unchanged. But in addition, my face looks brighter despite having fewer light sources, and colors look even more pleasing to the eye than before.
By contrast, the Razer Kiyo Pro presents a more true-to-life picture that better resembles what the light in my room actually looked like to my naked eyes when taking shots. Picture quality is still far ahead of either competitor, but if you want your dark rooms to look more well-lit than they actually are, the AverMedia seems to do that well.
It’s a shame that its grain persisted here, too.
Overexposed Room
Logitech C920 webcam
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Razer Kiyo Pro Webcam
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
AverMedia PW315 Webcam
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Finally, I tested the AverMedia PW315 in an overexposed room, where I pointed my camera directly at my window. I normally don’t expect accurate shots from this situation, and instead use it to see how well each camera responds to heavily lit situations. For instance, you can see some of the Kiyo Pro’s light sensor technology at work in its overexposed shot, as it shows more of the world outside my window than any other camera here, albeit at the expense of seeing my face..
The AverMedia shocked me, however, by being the only of the three cameras to accurately show my face in overexposed conditions. As with my low light photos, I arguably look better here. By contrast, I have so much shadow covering my face in the Logitech and Razer photos that I almost appear demonic.
Yes, the AverMedia’s grain is still present in these shots, but it doesn’t really matter. It was the only camera to give me anything usable in such heavy light.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The AverMedia PW315 has a thin, cylindrical design that feels lightweight and inexpensive but offers plenty of customizability when it comes to camera placement. The camera can tilt both up and down and swivel 360 degrees. There’s a hole on the bottom of its monitor mount to attach it to a tripod, and it fits snugly whether placing it on a monitor or a tripod. Its USB Type-A cord is 56.5 inches long, which also gave me plenty of room to attach it to either a front or rear port on my desktop.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The AverMedia PW315 also had a built-in sliding privacy shutter, plus dual microphones that tend to produce loud but tinny and echo-filled audio.
As with most webcams, there’s also an LED that lights up on the AverMedia PW315 when it’s recording.
Special Features on the AverMedia PW315
The AverMedia PW315 webcam is a color accurate webcam that’s resilient to both high and low light environments but suffers in quality more than I’d expect from its $119 price point. But special features is where this webcam makes its best argument for itself. Unlike most 60 fps webcams, which range from $50-80 more expensive than the AverMedia PW315, this camera can capture high frame rate footage on a budget.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
And to the PW315’s credit, those claims held out in my testing. When I navigated to OBS, turned on 60 fps recording, and took a video, I could easily see the clear uptick in frame rate without even trying. The video also only took up 20 more MB on my hard drive than a normal 30 fps video, and the extra frames helped counterbalance the lack of image quality, since the camera’s footage tended to look best in motion.
The AverMedia PW315’s other special feature is compatibility with AverMedia’s CamEngine software. You can use CamEngine to adjust your photos’ brightness, gamma and other settings, though most of these functions are available in other software like OBS and produce similar results there as well.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
But a facet of CamEngine that’s unique to the AverMedia PW315 is the ability to turn on AI framing, which attempts to follow you around as you move similar to the auto frame feature in Nvidia Broadcast. It’s an impressive utility, but I found it to be too slow and chunky for regular use. Slightly more useful is the ability to adjust the frame and zoom manually, although it’s possible to easily end up with negative space in your photos if you’re not careful.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
CamEngine also has a number of cute, Snapchat-esque virtual masks you can place over your face. The face tracking works surprisingly well here, even following you when you turn your head to the side, although there’s no real reason to use this over Snapchat’s free and more versatile software.
Bottom Line
AverMedia’s well known for its capture cards, and with products like the AverMedia PW315, it’s clear that the company has ambitions of moving beyond components and into peripherals, though that’s a far more crowded space. It’s going to have to step up image quality if it wants to compete with the best webcams.
There are some unique positives to the AverMedia PW315. It’s one of the cheaper 1080p @ 60 fps webcams from a known manufacturer on the market, and it’s resilient to both low light and overexposed environments. Its software also gives it a touch more customizability than your typical webcam, although much of its usability is perfunctory.
But its images are also grainy and heavily pixelated. It’s a problem for a $119 camera to have such drastically lower quality than a $79 competitor, especially when its 60 fps selling point is so niche. If you’re looking for a good casual use webcam and are confident with your room’s lighting, you can do better for cheaper. Meanwhile, if you want to stream at 60 fps, it might be worth spending the extra $80 on something like the Razer Kiyo Pro or Logitech Brio 4K to give your audience a more pleasant viewing experience.
Lately, the consumer internet — that set of products devoted to building and monetizing large networks of people — has started to feel rather buzzy. A space that had been largely emptied out over the past five years is once again humming with life. The products are compelling enough, and growing fast enough, that Facebook and others have begun trying to reverse-engineer and copy them.
It still doesn’t seem quite real to me, and yet everywhere I look the signs are there: social networks are competitive again.
Today, let’s tour this weird new landscape and talk about what it means — and doesn’t mean — for the tech giants and the governments trying to rein them in.
I. How competition ended
If I had to put a date on when competition ended among social networks in the United States, I’d choose August 2nd, 2016. That’s when Instagram introduced its copy of Snapchat stories, blunting the momentum of an upstart challenger and sending a chill through the startup ecosystem.
I don’t think copying features is necessarily anti-competitive — in fact, as I’ll argue below, it’s a sign that the ecosystem is working as intended — but the effect of Facebook’s copying here was dramatic. Snap fell into a long funk, and would-be entrepreneurs and investors got the message: Facebook will seek to acquire or copy any upstart social product, dramatically limiting its odds of breakout success. Investment shrunk accordingly.
The previous year, after the success of Twitter’s Periscope app, Facebook had cloned its live video features, and enthusiasm for both products seemed to broadly peter out. When live group video experienced momentary success under Houseparty, Facebook cloned that too, and Houseparty later sold to Epic Games for an undisclosed sum.
It was in this stagnant environment that many people, myself included, came to believe that it had been a mistake to let Facebook acquire Instagram and WhatsApp. The former became the breakout social network of a younger generation, and the latter cemented Facebook’s global dominance in communication. A world in which both had remained independent would have been much more competitive, even if neither had grown to the scale that they did under Facebook.
This is the basic thesis of the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against the company, which it filed in December. The government argues that Facebook “is illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct,” and if successful, it could force Facebook to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp. It’s a tricky case; as Ben Thompson explains here, the government’s attempt to define the market in which Facebook competes so as to prove it has a monopoly is rather tortured.
You can think the FTC’s case against Facebook is weak and also believe that the period from 2016 to 2021 saw remarkably little innovation among American social networks, at least in terms of the basic user behaviors that they inspire. The market for social products became incredibly concentrated; Facebook and Google built a duopoly in digital advertising; and their vast size and unpredictable effects helped to trigger a global backlash against American tech giants.
If, like me, you think this is all a problem, you could argue for one of two basic approaches to fixing it. The first is government intervention, in the form of an antitrust lawsuit or new regulations from Congress, that would regulate the ability of tech giants to acquire smaller companies or put up new barriers to entering the market or competing on fair terms. The second is to do basically nothing, trusting that the entropic nature of the universe and the inexorable march of time would eventually restore competition.
If the second choice sounds ridiculous, it is not without precedent. In the late 1990s, Microsoft’s dominance over the PC market led the government to pursue an antitrust case over the company’s move to bundle its Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system. The fear was that such bundling would grant Microsoft total power over the consumer PC market forever. In reality, of course, mobile phones were out there just waiting to be perfected, and then Apple came along and did just that, and now no one really worries too much about Microsoft’s power over the PC market.
I do wish the US government had intervened around 2016 to explore new regulations for tech giants’ mergers and acquisitions. In its absence, we could only bet on entropy — and whichever contrarian capitalists still felt like they could challenge Facebook in the market despite its many advantages.
The thing is, though, that a bunch of contrarian capitalists did. And lately they have been having a lot of success.
II.How competition began
Facebook’s biggest competitor in 2021 is, of course, TikTok, which has been siphoning usage from Facebook’s family of apps since it launched in the United States in 2018 (after merging with Musical.ly).
TikTok began by making it dramatically easier for people to make compelling videos, parceled out fame and fortune with a central feed that is incredibly compelling even if you don’t know or follow a single person, and eventually created an entire universe of audio memes, visual effects, and community in-jokes.
Eugene Wei, our best writer and thinker on TikTok, published the third part of his essay series about the app Sunday night. Among the many salient points Wei makes is that the sheer number of forces that have gone into TikTok’s success have made it difficult for Facebook (or YouTube) to clone. He writes:
People will litigate Instagram copying Snapchat’s Stories feature until the end of time, but the fact is that format wasn’t ever going to be some defensible moat. Ephemerality is a clever new dimension on which to vary social media, but it’s easily copiable.
This is why TikTok’s network effects of creativity matter. To clone TikTok, you can’t just copy any single feature. It’s all of that, and not just the features, but how users deploy them and how the resultant videos interact with each other on the FYP feed. It’s replicating all the feedback loops that are built into TikTok’s ecosystem, all of which are interconnected. Maybe you can copy some of the atoms, but the magic lives at the molecular level.
The success of TikTok is a source of real anxiety inside Facebook, where employees ask CEO Mark Zuckerberg a question about it during nearly every all-hands Q&A session. The company has deployed a competitor, called Reels, inside of Instagram, and perhaps it will find a way to succeed. But the larger point is that, whatever the odds, Facebook now has to compete against TiKTok or risk losing the next generation.
You’ve probably already considered that, though. (Unless you’re the FTC, which conspicuously avoided any mention of TikTok in its entire complaint about Facebook’s alleged monopoly position.) But when it comes to mobile short-form video, Facebook and YouTube face a real challenge.
So where else does Facebook suddenly find itself forced to compete?
For starters, there’s audio. While still available only by invitation, Clubhouse recently hit an estimated 10 million downloads. Celebrities including Tiffany Haddish, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and Zuckerberg himself have made appearances on the app, granting it a cultural cachet rare in a social startup that is still less than a year old. Clubhouse raised money last month at a valuation of $1 billion — more than Facebook ultimately paid for Instagram.
Because it’s an audio app, Clubhouse doesn’t pose quite the existential threat that TikTok does: you can still theoretically browse Instagram or message businesses on WhatsApp while listening to a Clubhouse chat. But Facebook has been sufficiently intrigued by Clubhouse’s rapid rise that it is now working out how to clone the app, according to a report this month in TheNew York Times. Elsewhere, Twitter already has a Clubhouse clone, called Spaces, in beta. It’s not clear that Clubhouse poses a threat to either company, exactly. But both are still taking it as a challenge.
What else?
After years of making its most prominent investments in technically challenging media involving video, augmented reality, and virtual reality, Facebook is reportedly taking a second look at text. The rise of Substack over the past year has begun to mint a growing number of millionaire, text-based creators, while also pulling millions of people away from their social feeds into the relative calm of the email inbox. (I have a personal stake in this one, of course; I started a newsletter in large part because my social feeds had come to feel like a lousy place to get my news.)
What’s interesting here is that Facebook now seems open to this possibility, too. Last month, the Times also reported that Facebook is developing newsletter tools for reporters and writers. (I’ve confirmed this with my own sources.) As with Clubhouse, newsletters hardly pose an existential threat to Facebook. But they do bleed time and attention away from the company’s apps — and in a world where news may not be even available on Facebook in some countries, it may be wise for it to have a hedge. (And Twitter clearly thinks so, too: it acquired Substack competitor Revue last month.)
That leaves Facebook competing with legitimately fast-growing, well-funded competitors across several categories. And while it’s in a much earlier stage, I think the company may soon have an interesting competitor in photography as well.
Dispo is an invite-only social photo app with a twist: you can’t see any photos you take with the app until 24 hours after you take them. (The app sends you a push notification to open them every day at 9AM local time: among other things, a nice hack to boost daily usage.) Founded by David Dobrik, one of the world’s most popular YouTubers, Dispo has been around as a basic utility for a year. But last month a beta version launched on iOS with social features including shared photo “rolls,” and it quickly hit the 10,000-person cap on Apple’s TestFlight software. It raised $4 million in seed funding in October, and assuming the buzz continues into a public launch, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dispo took off in a major way.
Audio, video, photos, and text: to some extent, Facebook has never had to stop competing across these dimensions in the company’s history. But I can’t remember the last time it was fighting so many interesting battles at the same time.
III. What it means
Here’s what I’m not saying when I argue that social networks are competitive again:
That Facebook has not acted in various anti-competitive ways throughout its history.
That Facebook should no longer be subject to antitrust scrutiny, or that the US government (and, separately, a coalition of US attorneys general) should abandon their lawsuits.
That, given all this new competition, Facebook should be allowed to purchase rival social networks in the future.
That Facebook won’t remain the world’s largest social network for a long time to come, or that its business will suffer in the short term.
In fact, I think there’s a good case to be made that antitrust pressure from the US government in particular is what has allowed competition to return to social networks in the first place. Had Clubhouse or Substack emerged in 2013 or 2014, it’s not hard to imagine Facebook racing to acquire them and knock them off the chessboard. But in 2021, when Facebook faces a formal antitrust review in the United Kingdom over its acquisition of a failing GIF search engine, the company can only sit back and try to copy what others are doing better.
If that’s the case, it suggests that the half-assed response to Facebook’s growing dominance over the past half-decade nonetheless got us, however belatedly, to a better place. Antitrust pressure made it extremely difficult for the company to make acquisitions, opening a window just big enough for new entrants to climb through. It remains to be seen how big any new challengers to Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter can grow. But for the first time in a long time, I’m optimistic about their chances.
Facebook, a company known for ripping its ideas from competitors, has reportedly set its sights on social audio. The New York Times reports today that the company is working on a copycat of Clubhouse, the buzzy invite-only social audio startup. The Times reports the product is in the “early stages of development,” so it’s unclear if and when it might launch.
The news comes only five days after CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined Clubhouse and participated in a room to talk about the future of augmented and virtual reality. His presence on the app was shocking, given it’s a new social network, so the fact that Facebook might now be cloning Clubhouse is no surprise. The company has already done so with multiple other apps, including, most infamously, Stories, which it took from Snapchat, and Reels, its TikTok competitor that launched last year.
Twitter is also working on a Clubhouse competitor called Spaces, which is in beta at the moment. Its team acquired social podcasting company Breaker, seemingly for its expertise in social audio, to help beef up its efforts. Meanwhile, Mark Cuban is also at work on a live audio app called Fireside, which The Verge reported on earlier this week. Clearly, lots of people in tech think audio will be an important format for communicating in the future, and they’re rapidly trying to get in on it before the trend dies out.
Reddit will double the number of employees it has over the course of this year to around 1,400 after raising $250 million in a new funding round, the company has announced. Reddit currently has around 700 employees globally. Over 600 are based in the US, according to CNBC, where it has offices in San Francisco, New York, LA, and Chicago.
The announcement of the new funding round comes as the site’s r/WallStreetBets subreddit gained widespread attention for its role in increasing the share prices of GameStop, AMC, and other companies. Redditors organized to purchase shares in certain companies en-masse, turbocharging their stock prices at the expense of short-selling hedge funds. As of last week the Securities and Exchange commission is reportedly investigating whether misinformation posted on social media could have violated securities laws.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman tells The Wall Street Journalthat the company isn’t planning on “materially changing” its strategy as a result of the funding round. The company says it plans to use the money to invest in video, advertising, consumer products, and international expansion. On Sunday, Reddit said that it spent its entire marketing budget on a single 5-second Super Bowl ad celebrating its role in the GameStop stocks saga. Last year Reddit acquired Dubsmash, a “short-form video social platform” whose video creation tools it plans to integrate into its own platform.
Reddit’s valuation doubled to $6 billion as a result of the new funding, according to the WSJ. Last quarter, the company’s direct advertising revenue was up 90 percent compared to the same period a year earlier, Reddit says.
As of December, Reddit boasted 52 million daily active users, For comparison, Facebook has around 1.85 billion daily users, Snapchat’s parent company Snap has 265 million daily active users, and Twitter recent said it averages 187 million.
Snap is introducing a new feature it’s calling Friend Check Up. On Snapchat, having someone friended could give them access to your story and even possibly your location, depending on your Snap Map settings, so Snap wants to make sure that everyone on your friends list is still someone you actually want to call your friend.
This feature could help make the platform safer for users, if they choose to use it. It could be a good way to help you realize you might still have somebody friended that you don’t want to see your posts. And I know there’ve been plenty of times when I’ve looked at a friend or follower of mine and said “I have no idea who this person is,” or worse: “oops, my ex can see my sadtweeting.”
Snap says that the feature will be rolling out globally on Android “in the coming weeks” and to iOS devices “in the coming months.” The reminder will show up as a notification on your profile screen, as you can see in this GIF:
The Friend Check Up feature shows a notification reminding you to look at your friends list.GIF: Snap
If you’d like to do a check up yourself before the feature rolls out, you can see your friends list by going to your profile and tapping on My Friends. You can remove a friend by tapping and holding on their name until the Block / Remove friend menu appears.
The Friend Check Up feature is part of a push from Snap to make Snapchat a friendlier place, including adding new resources and integrations with the Trevor Project for LGBTQ+ youths, and MindUP for parents trying to understand and support their teenage children. The social network is also getting further integration with the Crisis Text Project for people seeking mental health assistance.
Teams inside Twitter are researching ways for the company to offer paid subscriptions, which could include charging money for access to TweetDeck, Bloomberg reports. TweetDeck is a popular alternative to the main Twitter website and mobile app that allows users to more efficiently manage multiple accounts and organize Twitter into a series of easier-to-read vertical feeds.
Alongside charging for TweetDeck, the teams are said to be exploring other ideas, including charging for new features like an “undo send” button or more profile customization options. Another idea involves introducing “tipping” to Twitter, where users could pay accounts for exclusive content.
Twitter is thought to be exploring these plans as a way to reduce its reliance on advertising, which currently provides the majority of its revenue. Bloomberg notes that competing ad businesses from Facebook and Snapchat continue to grow faster than Twitter’s, and the company is under pressure to diversify, thanks to the pandemic as well as high-profile activist investors. Introducing a series of premium pay models to Twitter would be a bold move given most social media companies prioritize offering their services for free to maximize growth.
In a statement given to Bloomberg, Twitter’s head of revenue products, Bruce Falck, confirmed the company’s plans to improve its revenue mix “may include” subscriptions, but he stressed that its plans are in the “very early exploration” stage. “We do not expect any meaningful revenue attributable to these opportunities in 2021,” he added.
Twitter has been exploring some of these ideas for years. Back in 2017, the company considered charging for premium TweetDeck features before later abandoning the plans, and last year a customer survey revealed an interest in charging for an “undo send” feature. Bloomberg notes that subscriptions have been mentioned on the company’s last two earnings calls, and just this past December, Twitter CFO Ned Segal said the company was exploring charging for features like “higher-quality video” and “analytics.”
Twitter is due to report its latest earnings tomorrow, so there’s a chance we might know more about its plans sooner rather than later.
Snap says its TikTok competitor, Spotlight, had 100 million users in January 2021, just two months after it launched. The figure would suggest a surprisingly successful debut for the service, which has taken over the far-right tab inside of Snapchat.
TikTok likely still has a significant lead on the new service, though. TikTok said it had 100 million monthly users in the United States alone as of June 2020, and signs suggest the app has only continued to grow since then. (On the other hand, Instagram’s leader has said he’s “not yet happy with” Reels, its shortform video competitor.)
Snap has put a lot of money behind Spotlight in order to help the section catch on. The company promised to give away $1 million per day to creators for more than a month in order to get people posting videos, filling the service with fun stuff to watch. The initiative seemingly worked, with some creators seeing the service as a quick way to make a lot of cash. Creators are now uploading an average of 175,000 videos per day, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in prepared remarks for investors.
“While it is still very early in the development of this new content platform, we are highly encouraged by the initial results and excited about the potential for Spotlight to further expand our monetization opportunity in the future,” Snap CFO Derek Andersen said in prepared remarks.
The feature is still far more limited than TikTok. Exploration options are limited, and you can’t remix sounds or go down a rabbit hole of dance videos to a popular song, bot features that have helped TikTok continue to grow.
It’s also worth noting that Snap gave the figure in terms of monthly users when the company has long placed a focus on daily users overall. That suggests the daily usage of the feature is a good amount lower, given that someone only needed to open the tab once in January to be considered a monthly user. Snap now boasts 265 million daily users overall, up from 249 million the prior quarter, the company said in its Q4 2020 earnings release.
Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp has started posting Status messages to users about its “commitment to your privacy.” The in-app messages were appearing for members of The Verge staff in the US and UK on Saturday, and some users reported the Status messages — WhatsApp’s version of Snapchat Stories or Twitter Fleets—have been appearing in India for a while now.
“There’s been a lot of misinformation and confusion around our recent update and we want to help everyone understand the facts behind how WhatsApp protects people’s privacy and security,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said in an email to The Verge. “Going forward, we’re going to provide updates to people in the Status tab so people hear from WhatsApp directly. Our first update reaffirms that WhatsApp cannot see your personal messages, and neither can Facebook, because they are protected by end-to-end encryption.”
The messages read “One thing that isn’t new is our commitment to your privacy,” and a reminder that “WhatsApp can’t read or listen to your personal conversations as they’re end-to-end encrypted.”
WhatsApp adds Status updates about its privacy policy
The messages are part of a larger effort from WhatsApp to dispel misperceptions about an upcoming update to its privacy policy. The update is meant to explain how businesses that use WhatsApp for customer service may store logs of their chats on Facebook’s servers. WhatsApp previewed the changes to business chats in November. Given Facebook’s history of privacy blunders, however, users misinterpreted the changes to the privacy policy to mean WhatsApp would require sharing sensitive profile information with Facebook.
The company posted an FAQ page about the changes, and has pushed back the date the update will take effect from February to May. It issued a statement earlier this month addressing the confusion to reiterate what the new privacy policy would cover:
The update does not change WhatsApp’s data sharing practices with Facebook and does not impact how people communicate privately with friends or family wherever they are in the world. WhatsApp remains deeply committed to protecting people’s privacy. We are communicating directly with users through WhatsApp about these changes so they have time to review the new policy over the course of the next month
Amid the ensuing confusion, rival messaging apps Signal and Telegram have both recently seen a surge in new users. Telegram said last week it’s added the ability for users to import their chat history from WhatsApp. And Signal has added new mainstream chat features like animated stickers and wallpapers to its app.
With an ongoing pandemic and an unprecedented lockdown of the nation’s capital, Joe Biden’s inauguration will look different from those that came before it.
The Biden inaugural committee has already planned a week of extensive televised events — like live performances from Lady Gaga and Fall Out Boy — but to try to recreate the camaraderie of a live event, the team has also come up with a new way for supporters to participate virtually.
On Wednesday, Biden’s team will launch a Snapchat filter that transports users to the Capitol to participate from home. Once the inaugural filter is selected in the Snapchat reel, users can take a selfie in front of the Capitol as confetti falls from above. If users flip the camera around, they’ll be greeted by a Biden Jumbotron in front of a crowd of inauguration attendees whose faces are selfies sent in by supporters online.
Biden’s Inauguration Day Snapchat filter in selfie mode.
The filter will play an exclusive message from Biden directly addressing Snapchatters. “Hey Snapchat!! It’s me, Joe. Welcome to inauguration!” he says.
The filter will also direct users who access it to a live stream of the inauguration event on Wednesday.
“This year’s inauguration has allowed us to create new, innovative, and creative tools for Americans across the country to participate in inaugural traditions and ceremonies while staying home to keep everyone safe,” said Christian Tom, digital director for the presidential inaugural committee. “We are excited for President-elect Biden to share his message around unifying the country with folks on Snapchat and invite them to be a part of this historic inaugural.”
Security measures have rendered traditional selfies impossible, as much of Washington, DC has been placed under lockdown in the wake of the Capitol riot. The FBI has warned of planned armed protests in the area, which encouraged the Department of Homeland Security to launch an inaugural security operation to keep the White House and Capitol safe through the inauguration events. Around 21,000 National Guard members will be in DC on Wednesday to help secure the event.
The inauguration Snapchat filter builds on the augmented reality tech Biden’s campaign used last year to get out the vote. In one filter ahead of Election Day, users could point their cameras at USPS mail boxes and receive directions on how to vote by mail. Last September, the Biden team put out merch for players of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and later that fall designed an entire island in the game for players to visit.
“We hope this tool will bring the inaugural experience to young Americans wherever they are and share it with their friends and families,” Tom said in a statement about the upcoming filter.
The video app TikTok has introduced the first augmented reality filter that uses the lidar sensor of the iPhone 12 Pro. Using Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging), the camera system can detect distances by laser and thus reproduce the immediate surroundings three-dimensionally – this allows superimposed virtual objects to react to physical objects.
Bridge between the virtual and the physical world The lidar technology in the iPhone enables effects that interact with the environment instead of just overlaying it, as TikTok explains. The sensor makes it possible to “build a visual bridge between the digital and the physical world”. In a video provided by the service, a virtual glitter bomb empties its contents, which land both in real time on a person’s outstretched arms and on the couch. According to TikTok, this is just the beginning, further AR effects of this kind are to follow Depth interface of Apple’s augmented reality framework ARKit 4, making it available to a wide range of users. Other social media platforms are now also experimenting with it: Snapchat integrated the option into its Lens Studio last fall in order to enable artists and developers to use the technology for their own “lenses” or filters.
Lidar so far only in a few model series Currently Apple only uses lidar sensors in iPhone 12 Pro, Pro Max and the iPad Pro 2020. According to rumors, however, the group plans to equip all model series of the iPhone 12 with lidar, which would make the technology available to an even larger audience from autumn. Lidar also supports the camera’s autofocus in the iPhone and, as an operating aid, allows you to determine the distance to people in the vicinity.
Just about any account you own on the internet is prone to being hacked. After numerous widespread breaches through the past few years, tech companies have been working together to develop a standard that would make passwords a thing of the past, replacing them with more secure methods like biometric or PIN-based logins that do not require transferring data over the internet.
But while those standards are still being adopted, the next best way to secure your accounts is two-factor authentication, or 2FA. This a process that gives web services secondary access to the account owner (you) in order to verify a login attempt. Typically, this involves a phone number and / or email address. This is how it works: when you log in to a service, you use your mobile phone to verify your identity by either clicking on a texted / emailed link or typing in a number sent by an authenticator app.
What are authenticator apps?
Authenticator apps are considered more secure than texting. They also offer flexibility when you are traveling to a place without cellular service. Popular options include Authy, Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, or Hennge OTP (iOS only). These apps mostly follow the same procedure when adding a new account: you scan a QR code associated with your account, and it is saved in the app. The next time you log in to your service or app, it will ask for a numerical code; just open up the authenticator app to find the randomly generated code required to get past security.
While 2FA — via text, email, or an authenticator app — does not completely cloak you from potential hackers, it is an important step in preventing your account from being accessed by unauthorized users. Here’s how to enable 2FA on your accounts across the web.
Apple
Two-factor authentication is currently offered to Apple users on iOS 9 and later or macOS X El Capitan and later.
iOS
The steps are slightly different depending on how updated your iOS software is. For those using iOS 10.3 or later, you can enable 2FA on your Apple ID by going to Settings > [Your Name] > Password & Security. Turn on 2FA to receive a text message with a code each time you log in.
For those using iOS 10.2 or earlier, the settings are under iCloud > Apple ID > Password & Security.
macOS
Again, steps are slightly different depending on your version of macOS. If you’re using Catalina, click the Apple icon on the upper-left corner of your screen, then click System Preferences > Apple ID. Click on Password & Security under your name, and then select “Turn On Two-Factor Authentication.”
For Mojave and earlier, after you click the Apple icon, click System Preferences > iCloud > Account Details. (You can shorten this step a bit by typing in “iCloud” using Spotlight.) Click on Security, and you’ll see the option to turn 2FA on.
The remainder of the steps, from either iOS or Mac, are the same. You can opt for Apple to send you a six-digit verification code by text message or a phone call. You can also set up a physical security key here.
Instagram
Instagram added 2FA to its mobile app in 2017, but now you can also activate it through the web.
To activate 2FA on your mobile app, head over to your profile and click the hamburger menu on the upper-right corner. Look for “Settings” > “Security,” where you’ll find a menu item for Two-Factor Authentication.
Here, you can choose between text message-based verification or a code sent to your authentication app.
GIF by Amelia Krales / The Verge
To turn on 2FA using the web, log in and head to your profile. Next to your profile name and the Edit Profile button, there is a gear icon. Clicking this will pop open a settings menu, where you can find the same Privacy and Security section as on the app. From here, you can turn on 2FA and, just as in the app, choose your method for verification.
Clicking on the gear icon will pop open a settings menu.
Facebook
The way to access Facebook’s 2FA settings is a bit different on the app and the web (and Facebook tends to update both layouts often).
You can access your privacy settings on the mobile app on both iOS and Android by clicking the hamburger icon on the upper-right corner and scrolling down to the bottom to find the “Settings & Privacy” menu. Tap “Settings” > “Security and Login” and scroll down to “Use two-factor authentication.”
Like Instagram (they are part of the same company, after all), you can opt for a text message or an authentication app.
On the web, click the down arrow in the upper-right corner, and select “Settings & Privacy” > “Privacy Shortcuts.” Look for the “Account Security” heading and click on “Use two-factor authentication.”
Facebook lets you authenticate via text message or authentication app.
Additionally, for apps that don’t support 2FA when logging in with a Facebook account (such as Xbox and Spotify), you can generate a unique password specifically associated with that account. From the original down arrow, select “Settings & Privacy” > “Settings” and then, from the menu on the left, “Security & Login” > “App passwords” (under the “Two-Factor Authorization” subhead). After resubmitting your Facebook password, you’ll be able to name the app, click generate, and save that password for the next time you have to log in.
Twitter
On the Twitter mobile app, tap the three-line “hamburger” icon at the top left of the screen and find the “Settings and privacy” selection. Go to “Account” > “Security.” Click on “Two-factor authentication” and follow the directions.
On the web, click on “More” in the left-hand menu and find “Settings and privacy.” Click on “Security and account access” (or you can just follow this link). Select “Security” > “Two-factor authorization.”
Once you’re all set up, Twitter will either ask for verification through an authentication app, or you will text a code number to your phone number when you want to log in. Twitter has also added security key support.
As with other services mentioned above, you can generate a backup code to use when you’re traveling and will be without internet or cell service. You may also see an option to create a temporary app password that you can use to log in from other devices. This can be used to log in to third-party apps if you have them linked to your Twitter account. Note that the temporary password expires one hour after being generated.
Amazon
Go to the Amazon homepage and log in. Hover over “Accounts & Lists” and click on “Account.” A box labeled “Login & security” will be at the top of the page; click on that and then click the Edit button on “Two-Step Verification (2SV) Settings.” (You may be asked to reenter your password first.) You can also navigate directly to that page by following this link.
Click Get Started, and Amazon will walk you through the process of registering your phone number, or you can opt to use your preferred authenticator app by syncing it through a QR code.
You can activate 2FA on both the Android and iOS Amazon app by tapping the hamburger menu on the left side and finding “Your Account” > “Login & security.” The same “Two-Step Verification (2SV) Settings” selection should be available for you to edit and toggle on 2FA.
Once your phone number or authenticator app has been verified, you can select trusted devices to bypass 2FA or generate a code to log in via a mobile app.
Google
The easiest way to turn 2FA on across your Google accounts (i.e., Gmail, YouTube, or Google Maps) is by heading over to the main 2FA landing page and clicking “Get Started.” You’ll be asked to log in then select your mobile device from a list. (If you have an iPhone, you may have to download a separate app.) Google will try to send a message to that phone; if it succeeds, you will be asked to enter a phone number; you can then choose whether you want to receive verification codes by text message or phone call. Again, Google will try out your chosen method.
After that, Google will first send prompts that allow you to simply click “Yes” or “No” when a login attempt occurs. If that doesn’t work, it will send the text message or phone call.
You can also generate backup codes for offline access. Google generates 10 at a time and they’re designed to be single-use, so once you’ve successfully used one, cross it out (assuming you’ve printed them out) as it will no longer work.
Snapchat
From the app’s main camera screen, tap your profile icon and find the gear icon to access your settings. Select “Two-Factor Authentication” and choose whether to receive a text message verification or hook it up to your authenticator app.
Once 2FA has been enabled on your Snapchat account, you can add trusted devices or request a recovery code for when you’re planning to be somewhere without cellular service. Snapchat does not seem to currently support security key logins.
Slack
To enable 2FA, you’ll first need to find the Account Settings page. There are two ways to access this:
Click on your username on the upper-right corner of the Slack app to open a drop-down menu and select “View profile.” Your account information will now display on the right side of the chat window. Under your avatar and next to the “Edit Profile” button, click the three-dotted icons for additional actions, and find “Account settings.” You can also head straight to my.slack.com/account/settings
You should immediately see the selection for “Two-Factor Authentication.”
If you do not see the option for 2FA, check whether your Slack account is for work. Some employers may use single sign-on services that bypass the need for 2FA, which eliminates this from Slack’s Account Settings page.
Like most other apps, Slack lets you use either SMS or an authentication app.
If this is a personal Slack, however, then click “Expand” on “Two-Factor Authentication” to verify your information by an SMS or authenticator app. If you have multiple email addresses, you may need to select a default one before you can decide on your preferred 2FA method.
Microsoft
Log in to your Microsoft account and find the “Security settings” menu (there are several ways to get there; click on the link for the easiest). Look for the “Two-step verification” section and click on the setup link. You’ll be walked through the steps needed to use either the Microsoft Authenticator app or use a different authentication app. You’ll also be able to create passwords for apps that don’t accept 2FA.
Dropbox
From your Dropbox homepage on the web, click your profile avatar and find Settings; then go to the Security tab. Find Two-Step Verification; it will tell you the status of your 2FA. Toggle to turn the feature on and choose to receive 2FA through a text or your authenticator app.
WhatsApp
Open up WhatsApp, and find the Settings menu under the upper-right hamburger icon. Look under “Account” > “Two-step verification” > “Enable.” The app will ask you to enter a six-digit PIN to use as verification and optionally add an email address in case you forget your PIN.
Having an associated email with your WhatsApp account is important since the service won’t let you reverify yourself if you’ve used WhatsApp within the last seven days and have forgotten your PIN. So if you can’t wait a week to reverify for whatever reason, it’s helpful to have entered an email address so you can log yourself in or disable 2FA. In the same vein: be cautious of emails encouraging you to turn off 2FA if you didn’t request it yourself.
PayPal
On the main Summary page, click the gear icon and find the Security tab. Look for the section called “2-step verification” and click on the Set Up link. You’ll get a choice to have a code texted to you or use an authenticator app. (PayPal also offers to find you an authenticator app if you want one.)
If you lose your phone, change numbers, or decide to revoke authorization rights, come back to this menu to make adjustments.
Note that the interface is different if you use PayPal as a business account. From the main Summary page, click the gear icon to be taken to the Settings page. Under Login and Security, look for the Security Key option to add your phone number or a security key as your 2FA method.
Nest
Smart home products like Nest are not exempt from getting hacked — in fact, Nest now strongly encourages its users to enroll in 2FA. For Nest, make sure your app is up to date on all of your devices. Then, on the home screen, go to Settings > Account > Manage account > Account security, and select two-step verification. Toggle the switch to on. A series of prompts will ask for your password, phone number, and the verification code that will be sent to your phone.
Keep in mind that all of your devices will be automatically signed out, so you’ll have to sign in again using the two-step verification.
If all your family members don’t have their own logins and have been using yours, it’s a good idea to set them up with separate logins using Family Accounts. Otherwise, when they try to log on using two-step verification, the necessary code will be sent to your phone, not theirs.
Ring
Like with Nest, make sure your Ring app is up to date. Swipe over from the left, then go to “Account” > “Two-Factor Authentication” (you’ll find it under “Enhanced Security”). Tap the big “Turn on two-factor” button. A series of prompts will ask for your password, phone number, and the verification code that will be sent to your phone.
From then on, you’ll need both your password and an SMS verification code whenever you want to log in to Ring from a new device.
Signal
Rather than traditional 2FA, Signal uses a PIN. Click your profile icon on the upper-left side and find “Privacy.” Look for “Registration Lock” to require your PIN (which you were asked for when you originally registered) to be entered each time you re-register your phone number. Signal requires your PIN to be at least four digits long, and up to a maximum of 20 digits.
When you first enable Registration Lock, Signal will ask you to type in your PIN in the first six and 12 hours after being enabled. The company says this is designed to help you to remember it through random repetition. So after the first day, it will ask you to enter it in the next day, then in three days, and finally one last time after a full week.
If you happen to forget your PIN and can’t log in to Signal, you will have to wait seven days of inactivity for your registration lock to expire, after which you can log in to your app again to set up a new PIN. Those who are already actively using Signal won’t have to worry about the Registration Lock resetting, as that clock only starts when the app isn’t open.
Did we miss your favorite apps?
For services not listed on this guide, check out TwoFactorAuth.org to find the app or service in question. This helpful site links to every official guide for companies that support 2FA, and gives you the option to message the company on Twitter, Facebook, or email to add 2FA if it currently does not have it.
On a final note: while adding 2FA is great for an extra layer of security on all your accounts, remember that you should be changing and updating your passwords regularly even with 2FA enabled, just to stay in tip-top shape. If that’s not your style, you can also use a password manager to automatically take care of it for you.
Update January 7th, 2021: This article was originally published on June 19th, 2017, and has been checked and updated several times so that the instructions for adding 2FA to these apps remain current. This is the latest update.
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